


The Tree Becoming

by Anna S (eliade)



Series: The Woods series [2]
Category: The Sentinel
Genre: M/M, Other: See Story Notes, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-08
Updated: 2013-06-08
Packaged: 2017-12-13 19:40:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/828081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eliade/pseuds/Anna%20S
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Second story in The Woods series.  Originally published in October, 2001</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Tree Becoming

**The Tree Becoming**  
 

"We need his deposition by Monday morning," Jim said into the phone. He tapped a mechanical pencil against his desk calendar, began drawing a tentative circle around the date, then pressed the lead roughly into the paper as he listened. "Well, that's your job, counsel."

Rafe came by and dropped a file on his desk. Jim glanced up, nodded absently. "Maybe we should get a little red wagon," he said into the phone. "Drag his ass into court. . .wagons don't have handbaskets. . .now that you mention it, I don't know either. Yep." He hung up.

An hour and four phone calls later, Jim picked up his coffee and downed a mouthful while trying to type a perp's social security number in with his free hand. The coffee was cold and the social security number did not have seven sixes in it. "Shit," Jim said, grimacing at the coffee's dead bitterness.

Rafe wandered by again with a soda in his hand, hesitated several paces past Jim's desk, then turned back. Jim spared him a glance. The other detective looked frayed at the edges. He'd worn pretty much the same brown suit for the last month and had stopped styling his hair. Jim had never even noticed Rafe's hair until all grooming ceased. He had something resembling bangs now. He also had stubble, and the dissolute air of a man who'd been drinking the night before. The scent of bar smoke lingered heavily in the weave of his suit.

"Jim."

"Yeah."

"Just thought I'd see how things were going."

"Okay."

Rafe came over, resting the soda can on top of Jim's monitor, level with Jim's eyes. Jim looked at it. "Things are going okay then," said Rafe. When Jim didn't immediately answer, he went on, "That guy from Justice called me yesterday. Bevington."

Jim, sensing Rafe's effort, roused himself. "Yeah, he called me too. Left a message." Rafe's fingernails were clattering against the side of the soda can. Jim felt himself losing focus in that tinny noise. "He had questions about my statement."

"What did you say?"

Jim looked up with little expression. "I told him to fuck off."

"Sons of bitches," affirmed the other man. Rafe's vicious rage against the federal authorities had burrowed deep; Jim could hear it behind the other man's rib cage, a snarl of tripping heartbeats when he voiced the epithet.

"Yeah."

"Well, I told him I didn't have time right then time to talk." Rafe cleared his throat. "I wanted to check with you. But I guess there's no point in telling them anything more."

"Do what you think is best," Jim said, staring back into the depths of his monitor.

"Look, Jim. I need to. . .to talk about this with you." The soda can buckled in Rafe's tensing hand. "Get coffee with me."

"I'm busy."

"We're all busy," snapped Rafe.

Henri came through the doorway into the squadroom and paused by the edge of Jim's desk as if sensing the brewing storm of warm front meeting cold. "What's up?"

Jim stood, the abrupt motion of his thighs sending his chair rolling to bounce lightly off the wall. He picked up his coffee mug. Tension was climbing toward his hairline, making him itch with forced self-command. "Nothing's up. Nothing at all."

He left the others standing at his desk and walked away, on a grim aim for coffee that was merely an excuse to leave. The squadroom sang dissonantly around him, clock hands ticking like hammer strikes, phones shrilling, the scanner grating out dispatches, voices echoing off every surface, and something metallic and maddening banging in the air vent that he wanted to rip out with his bare hands. Everything was the wrong color, warped and glowing, and the odors of the place were hellish. He'd been through this ordeal before more than once, before meeting Blair and a few times after; he'd forgotten just how bad it could get, and how it felt like insanity.

He bumped into Simon, because Simon was deliberately blocking his way and because Jim was trying to walk with his eyes three-quarters closed.

"Jim, come inside." Simon gripped his arm and directed Jim into his office. Jim compressed his lips and hid his distaste for the touch. The door was pushed shut behind them. Simon took the coffee mug out of his hand, dumped its contents in his wastebasket and poured him a fresh cup, talking all the while. "You've got that look. Like a walking headache. Not the usual kind." He turned, brought the coffee to Jim, inspecting him. "Senses offline?"

"Stop yelling at me, sir," Jim said by way of answer, keeping his own voice as low and flat as possible. He was trying to hold the coffee mug, determined on it. Against his fingertips a tide of sensation swelled, like a molten sea barricaded only by a thin, porous wall of fired clay--a sea of lava, burning acid--and surely something so strong must be eating away at the thin cup, dissolving it. He could feel its swelling heat against his fingertips now in fact, and with a sharp inhalation of pain, Jim let the mug tumble from his hands, watching as it spilled its dark contents on the floor.

Simon looked resigned. "Jim, why don't you go home."

"I'm in court Monday. My domestic's on the docket."

"Brewster? About time." Simon tossed a handful of paper towels on the floor by Jim, desultorily shoved them with his foot, then sat against the edge of his desk. "All the more reason to go. You've got it wrapped up."

"And six other open cases."

"Take some home. Look at them this weekend for an hour or two." Simon's gaze intensified through his glasses. "Jim. _Ellison_." He got Jim's frowning attention. "I don't have a problem with this," he said quietly.

Jim shifted against the table, stared at the spilled coffee, Simon's knees, the dusty air of the office. Hard to find something to focus on. "I was doing fine a while ago," he said. The thought troubled him. He'd come in late, well past noon, and been in the station four hours. It felt in his bones like a full day.

"Maybe--maybe Blair needs you."

That made Jim's eyebrows twitch. "Don't go all mystical on me, Simon." What he wanted to say was _back off, that's none of your business_.

Simon sighed largely, took off his glasses and rubbed a thumb against his brows. "Yeah, yeah. Listen, Jim, there's something I wanted to tell you."

"Oh oh."

Simon ignored his interjection. "You know I've been talking with our nice doctor. She's agreed to see Sandburg, if he wants to come in. No charge. Weekly sessions are all she could manage, but she can also recommend someone--"

"I'll tell him."

"It would be good for him to--"

"I'll tell him," Jim repeated, voice even and face dismissive.

Simon eyed Jim with frustrated concern. "Speaking of someone who needs a shrink rap, Jim, why don't you pay Judy a visit?"

"Judy?" A wan smile tugged at one side of Jim's mouth. "Hmmm."

"It's a strictly professional relationship," Simon said, pointing a warning finger at Jim. He seemed pleased by the tiny jibe, though.

Jim thought it had been enough to divert the other man, but after a minute of deepening silence he met his captain's eyes and understood that Simon was not going to stop staring expectantly at him until he received a direct answer. "I'll think about it, sir."

"Do you have to 'sir' me for this, Jim?" Simon sounded disappointed. "I'm not telling you to go, I'm just saying. . .it would be good. For both of you. As a friend, I'm saying that."

At last Jim bristled. "We're doing fine." Under the other man's skeptical look, he stubbornly held to his claim, anger burning under the surface of his words. "You think he can just talk about this to some shrink and make it all go away? You think it's just share some feelings and get it all out and everything's back to normal? You can't expect him to just turn it all around overnight."

"Turn all what around, Jim?"

Jim's jaw clamped down on a rude remark. Rudeness filled him up lately and it was hard to leave gut feelings unsaid. He wanted to get up and pace but held his seat, crossing his arms. "He's got his own thing. He's dealing with it. And that's his decision. If he wanted to talk to a shrink, he would. I'm not stopping him."

"Uh huh." Simon stood up, looming a bit. "Are you encouraging him?"

"I'm not _dis_ couraging him. He just doesn't want to go."

"Can he pay for it?"

Jim blinked, looked away. His face lost some of its rigidity. "I told him I'd pay for it." He stared out the window at a pair of wheeling gulls, the gleaming windows of the Chandler building across the street, the sunny world. "He knows. We're okay on that front. It's not an issue."

"For you," Simon said incisively.

Jim stood, took out his wallet, made a show of opening it. "How much do I owe you for _this_ session, sir?"

Simon put his glasses back on, stared hard through them at Jim. "Fuck you." He looked as if he might say something else, passed a few expressions, then the phone rang and took his attention away.

As Jim made a break for the door, Simon placed a hand over the receiver and said, "Go home."

"I'm going," Jim said.

*****

Jim left Simon's office irritated. His senses, which had been steadying out, flared up again as he walked through the squadroom. Right at this moment he hated the station, as if it were new to him, a place he'd never been comfortable. The entire building resonated with noise and smell and light, and its very air felt sharp to his touch, tasted like blood. At times he could almost sense the entire building, every floor and stairwell and duct, a huge cage of machinery that chewed mercilessly on his nerves.

Squinting against the light, he went to his desk, collected a few files and his jacket and logged out. He was tired. Stairwells hurt his ears these days, unbalanced something. Last week he'd terrified himself by falling down half a flight for no apparent reason. He waited for the elevator, eyes closed, and when their doors swept open he smelled Lady Stetson, and he knew the jangling mix of scents was called that because--

He opened his eyes. "Carolyn." His voice was a stunned, rough croak.

"Jim!" His ex-wife stepped out of the elevator, and the graceful turn of her body made him turn with her, like teeth in one cog turning another. They'd always meshed smoothly, and it had taken a long time for Jim to recognize that every contact inevitably rolled them in opposite directions.

They stood facing each other in front of the elevator with mutual scrutiny. Carolyn had cut her hair. New shade, more blonde. Otherwise much the same. She wore a tan linen suit, white shirt, and her skin was darker than both. She'd recently had sun.

"You look well," she said. "You've lost some weight."

"No," Jim answered, truthfully.

Carolyn adjusted her purse, straightened as if conscious of his disinterested assessment. "I--" She laughed, the way she used to when catching herself at something ironic, always just before spelling it out for him. "I should have called. I meant to. I've been in and out. Of town, I mean. Cascade. Six weeks ago, week before last. I didn't want to say anything before I was sure. I've been interviewing for a position." She took a deep breath, exerted a wider smile. "Which I got. I'm going to be assistant supervisor of the CAU, helping Jack maintain laboratory standards for all sections. Quality assurance, reviews, hiring. All that fun stuff."

Jim nodded, blinked. "That's great, Carolyn." He kept nodding, reaching inwardly for more to say, at a loss. "I'm really glad for you."

"I'm glad too." She cocked her head up at him. "I thought it might bother you. My coming back."

"No."

Her smile twisted in place. "You haven't changed much, Jim."

The elevator doors slid open again. Jim and Carolyn both stepped back a pace, and two detectives brushed between them, shooting quizzical looks as they debated the merits of Canadian hockey teams. Jim laid his hand on the frame, holding the doors open. He could tell she still wanted something from him. Apologies, excuses, politeness. A validation of their history. If he hadn't felt like shit, he might even have tried. He remembered that Carolyn never felt unwell. She'd made a virtue of this good fortune. Physically she possessed the vigorous health of an entire girls' volleyball team.

Jim stepped halfway into the elevator, retreating. "Sorry. . .I have a headache."

She nodded, lips performing further mockery. "You haven't changed much, Jim," she repeated.

He sketched a salute at her, stepped back farther and pressed the button for the parking garage. Carolyn hopped back in the elevator after him as the doors were closing. "Look, I'm sorry," she said.

"It's okay."

"I didn't mean for it to go like that. I was going to keep it light, witty, sophisticated." Carolyn chattered on while hunting for something in her purse, her dialogue directed toward its contents.

Jim closed his eyes again, and tried to dial down his sense of smell. It was sometimes hard to reconcile the mental image of a dial with how he processed smell, but he liked the consistency of dials, the idea of them. And Blair had taught him to imagine it--the _scent dial_ , Blair called it--as a small knob that controlled the filtration of air through a ventilation system. You dialed it down, and more and more was filtered out. Lady Stetson. Pantene. Tide.

". . .and I think we can stay on those terms, don't you, Jim?"

Jim opened his eyes. "Absolutely." He had no idea what terms they were on, but thought he was safe in agreeing.

"Good. Then come to lunch with me." Carolyn smiled, the elevator deposited them at the garage, and they got out. Jim raised a hand to his temple as an engine roared to life nearby.

"Jim. Jim?"

Surfacing to himself, Jim found Carolyn touching his arm and giving him a shrewd look mixed with curiosity and care. Ghosts of a once shared bed. He realigned his body in a way that was almost natural, so that her hand slid off.

"It's not really a good day for it."

Carolyn gave him another, funny look. "Jim." The single word in her voice sounded chiding, wry. She knelt down and began picking up the case folders he'd dropped.

Embarrassed, Jim bent down and plucked them from her hands, relieved that their contents had not spilled and created a more involving degree of shared labor. They both straightened up together awkwardly, and Carolyn reached out and dusted off his jacket for no real reason.

"You ever get that checked out?" Carolyn asked.

Alarmed, Jim stared at her. "What?"

"That thing." She made a loose gesture with her hand in the air that conveyed twirling pasta or mild lunacy. "Headaches. Loud noises. Nerves. What we used to pretend was just stress."

"It was just stress."

"You're amazing." Carolyn's unpursed hand went to her hip, a posture taking on old overtones of annoyance.

"Thanks."

"You think I didn't see the news from Cascade? Jim Ellison, Superman. 'The Sentinel.' The boy anthropologist certainly did wonders for your public image."

He couldn't imagine how she'd picked up on the story from San Francisco; it had been strictly local news in a slow week, and had been permanently retired when a Cascade bound passenger aircraft crashed that following Sunday. Not much later, his sentinel heyday had even been forgotten by the department at large; a joke not well understood by those who made it, a show whose brief entertainment interest expired when the World Hunger Organization convened in town. Wild protests and police response had drawn the media like flies, and as the Cascade Police Department pulled together as an organization came under the spotlight, Jim's personal notoriety became a sidebar and then a silence. He'd benefited from the coincidence of two far more serious events overshadowing his life, and he'd felt lucky.

"You caught that," he said lamely.

"Uh huh."

"It wasn't what it seemed."

"It seemed like a farce."

"Oh." Jim shifted from one foot to the other and he thumbed the file edges. "Well, that's kind of what it was."

Carolyn shrugged her purse up higher on one shoulder and squared herself as if an issue had been settled. "I assume he's gone now."

Jim returned slowly from the crossroads of memory. "Zeller?"

"Blair," said Carolyn in her dry, disparaging voice.

Shock hit Jim like a punch, that she could even suggest it. He gazed at her through a fog of headache and renewed animosity, wondering what she thought of him, what kind of shit she thought he was, then realized she knew nothing. Her timeline was outdated, her angle of vision skewed. She had no real insight into his life any more.

"He lives with me."

"Not still? Well, why should I be surprised. He's found the ideal free ride. I'm just amazed you put up with it. I suppose it has its benefits, though. Hero worship. Towel boy."

It would have been easier had Carolyn been jealous, but Jim could tell she was unaware of Blair's significance. She was being mildly catty in the style of an ex-wife, but her tone lacked bite and depth. She found his life with Blair amusing, an odd-couple arrangement. He'd lived with a man for four years, three years longer than their marriage had lasted, but she gave no sign that this had raised any doubts or suspicions.

"You don't know what you're talking about," Jim said. The remark eddied into the conversational current, and he watched it spin Carolyn as she tried to catch on.

"So what don't I know?"

"Later," Jim said. That one simple word felt good, a small admission. "I really have to get out of here." Exhaust fumes, perfume, engines and reverberating voices swirled around him. His head throbbed in precise synch with a squad car's laboring muffler. He was orienting himself to where he'd parked his truck, Carolyn still at his side trying to set a lunch date for later that week, when his cell phone rang. He pressed it on, said "Ellison" as the connection opened, and relaxed at once into the intimacy of his guide's presence. Technology became a conduit to something more primal; when he focused on Blair's voice the discordant world around him dropped away.

 _"Jim. Hey man. Just wanted to call_. . . _um_. _See what's up_."

Jim smiled. "I'm leaving early. Just on my way out."

" _Yeah? Cool, cool_. _Cool_." There was a sound of bedsprings, and the thump of a paperback book falling on hardwood boards. If Jim closed his eyes, it was as if he were right there in the room, watching the torqued movements of the other man's body.

"You want anything from the store?"

" _Oh_. . . _um_. _Yeah_. _I need_. . . _we need_. . . _lots of stuff_. _I had a list_. _Shit_."

"So call me back when you find it."

 _"I should put it on the laptop_. _It'd be, like, right here at my fingertips_." There was a sound of keys tapping. _"Jim, when you come home I want to tell you about these experiments they did with transgenic rats and pulsed digital radiaion_."

"Don't tell me it gave you ideas, Chief, because I'm not liking the sound of this."

" _No, no, no, Jim_. _We're talking cell phone radiation_."

Jim's eyebrows raised, but he noted with bland pointedness, "Yes, and we're talking on a cell phone."

" _I know, I know!_ _We've got to stop_."

He sounded a little wound up, Jim thought. He'd come to recognize those nervous cadences over the years; lately they came and went more often. "Why don't you come to the store with me," Jim said on impulse. "I can swing by and pick you up."

" _Yeah, okay_. _Can we go by the Holy Artichoke too? I need to get some stuff_."

"Sure. Wherever you want."

" _So, wait_. _I want to read you something_. _Just real quick_. _I don't want to contribute to any tumors_." Blair's voice picked up speed. " _I thought maybe the Holy Artichoke had a website, right, so I went online and they didn't have one, but listen to what I found_. _Englightenment_ , _sacrament, ritual_. . . _oh, here's a good part_ : _'Using Brother Fish's hands and computer, the collective of Artichokes set about writing the books of the Alien Artichoke Bible and prescriptions for effective rituals and other arcane knowledge from their ancient and glorious past and future_.'"

Blair laughed with apparent delight, relieving Jim's sudden fear he might be about to embark on a bizarre new religion. "I think you've been spending too much time on the net."

" _Probably_. _All right, go on now_." Blair hung up.

"Goodbye to you too," Jim murmured, tucking his phone back in his pocket.

He caught Carolyn's eye as he turned. She hadn't left, and he hadn't noticed.

"You two are very close, aren't you? It's sweet." Carolyn clipped off the word 'sweet' as if deadheading a rosebush, smiled as if closing shears. "Call me sometime, Jim. Maybe we'll do that lunch." She pushed past him with little regard for personal space and walked back toward the elevator, heels clicking with precision across the concrete.

"Goodbye to you too," Jim said again sourly.

The pressure of his headache had eased, but his mind churned; he rode home thinking in circles of Carolyn, cases, his talk with Simon. October. It was nearly five o'clock and already grey with dusk. The streets of Cascade were wet with an earlier rain, and Jim rolled the pick-up through them unhurriedly, peripherally aware of his city. Bright glassed storefronts, youths with backpacks pacing the traffic on their bicycles. Three blocks from his everyday turn onto Prospect. The bay, a slice of water between office buildings. Art store. Tattoo parlor. Plutonius Coffee, one of Blair's occasional haunts. Everything in the world was a soothing shade of grey except for the square business windows, lit up from the inside. Stunted trees, dripping their weight of rain. Bums in front of the mission. Sleek Japanese women striding in groups across the pedestrian walks with oversized shopping bags.  
   
Even through the closed truck windows, he could smell the city; salt water and Thai food, garbage and car exhaust. He wished he could keep driving right out of it, pictured himself taking the I-5 ramp, heading up into Canada. Driving highway to highway, road to road, for months. His fantasy had an empty vista, was brief, but it left him restless and disinclined to leave the truck. Laziness, rain, supermarket, Blair. No need to get out of the truck. As he neared home he called Blair, arranging to meet him at the building's entrance.

And a few minutes later Jim pulled up front and saw through the glass of the building's lobby Blair looking out, waiting for him. He stood in front of the mailboxes, a leaning body in flannel and jeans, face set with watchful intensity. The day's inversion--dark outside, light in--made him seem the most solid object in an otherwise shadowed world. He was wearing two loose shirts, the outer one Jim's. He looked quiet. He looked like Christmas.

He came out and climbed in the truck, and Jim watched every move from point A to point Z. How he pushed open the lobby door. The consecutive angles at which he held his head, lowered as he moved through the opening door, raised and wary as he hit open air. Calm on the face of it, brows unconsciously drawn, lips unmoving. Eyes skimming a look over the parking lot, the neighborhood. Fine easy flow of his body, loosened of its recent pain. Then he was in with a _hey_ and was leaning to close the door, familiar body, familiar motions.

Something in Jim's aching throat relaxed and it was simply good: the inrushing smell of Blair's body, the spilling warmth of his heat signature, thigh muscles bunching subtly through his jeans as he stretched to close the door. Maybe there were other guys somewhere who looked more or less like Blair, spoke like him, dressed like him, but Jim never thought them to be in the same species. No one else was sitting here in Jim's truck. No one else had that right or _rightness_. Blair fit a niche, the small particular niche that was Jim's life, and fit in ways Jim couldn't label. What labels they'd already given each other didn't seem enough. When he tried to break down his sense of Blair into thoughtful elements, they came clumsily in words like _compact_ and _clean_ and _textured_ , losing all the significance he'd assigned them. He suspected Blair would laugh at this kind of description; or he might furrow his brow, stare at Jim and take notes.

Questions, always with the questions. Complicated, fatherless. Curious. Sturdy.

 _God, I hope he's sturdy_ , Jim thought.

Blair was looking over at him. Jim smiled, lifted an arm out and brushed his knuckles across the other man's hair in not quite a rap, tugged his ponytail then cupped his neck. Blair's lips set in a tiny mona-lisa reply, a sign he was pleased.

Jim's hand stayed put, happy as the rest of him.

Blair's eyeslashes flitted consideringly at Jim. "What are you up to?"

"Just glad to see you." Mildly embarrassed, but satisfied, he stroked Blair's neck and then drew his hand away to drive.

"Good day, huh? But you're home early." Blair's left knee jiggled; his fingers plucked at the white threads of a hole in the denim there. He was looking out the windows.

"Headache."

Blair focused on him. "Again?"

"Comes and goes."

"Yeah, for weeks, Jim." Blair tilted his head back, stared at the sun-visor as if it held answers; he said nothing for a while. They both said nothing for a while, for different reasons. After six blocks and three red lights, Blair said: "I'm not doing my job."

"What?"

"Just thinking aloud."

"Think a little louder, then. I'm not getting it."

"I'm not getting it either."

Jim nodded patiently, navigating them through traffic.

"Actually, I've been doing a lot of thinking."

It was a flat, commonplace statement that made Jim's blood thin with a sense of impending loss. He felt certain Blair was about to launch his intentions to move out, head for Zimbabwe or San Francisco, take up meditation on a distant beach. Jim felt insufficient to keep him. And he thought that if he'd been in Blair's shoes, he'd be feeling the need to run.

"I've got to go deep," Blair said.

Jim blinked at the road, the blurred windshield, the headlights. "Deep," he repeated.

"Deeper," Blair said absently.

That didn't sound so bad. Deep, deeper to ground, like a tree, and trees stayed in one spot. Unless Blair wanted to plant himself elsewhere. Interrogation would have been easy, but Jim held his tongue. He'd let Blair work at his own pace toward whatever he wanted to say. Blair had never needed prodding.

And yet they reached the supermarket, took a cart, and were wheeling slowly down the aisles and Blair was still saying nothing meaningful. They talked about how green beans didn't look as good as they used to, the new Volkswagens, prospects for winter, and Jim's court appearance Monday morning.

Going deep. What the hell did that mean.

The cart had a squeak, the ceiling lights hummed, and public humanity thronged the aisles. Jim let his touch glide often to Blair, to the small of his back, his shoulder, even to Blair's own hand as they stood close and picked through a bin of locally grown apples. It was a good supermarket. No one noticed casual PDA between two men. They'd been shopping here for years, since it opened, and Jim had always liked the atmosphere and the illicit contentment of knowing the cashiers took them for a couple, even back when they hadn't been.

"Look, they have those caramel wraps for apples."

"Halloween in two days," Jim observed.

Blair paused. "Really?" He hefted an apple, thumbed it over seeking bruises on the dark red skin. "How'd that happen. All that time. Six weeks. . .on Sunday."

It dispirited Jim to hear the other man calendaring his moments from a single, painful date; dark mockery of what might have been an anniversary. "Don't think of it like that," he said. Speech seemed to be pulling rough scarves out of his throat instead of words.

"Like what?"

Jim struggled for meaning. "Like it's this, this. . .Sunday. It's not a Sunday, it's not every week. Just one day. And it won't be repeating. It's over."

Blair's eyes sought his; Jim could feel the inquisitory focus but couldn't return it. His cheeks fanned up heat. He felt helpless, like an asshole, pressured by the certainty that no matter how he dealt with this he'd deal it out all wrong. And, _shit_ , you didn't tell people their trauma was over, that was for them to decide. But he'd never lived with the victims whose cases he'd worked. He saw them for a few interviews, and they met in the netural territory of precinct and courtroom; not bedroom, kitchen, the fucking produce aisle.

"It's over and it's not. Healing takes time." Blair's reasonable voice shored up the platitude, and the fluorescent lights and apples and passing goths added a nice, normal context to its tenable wisdom, so that for a moment Jim could imagine a different Blair who was coming along pretty well, who did not whimper in his sleep, listen for sounds at the windows, pick at his scabs. The real Blair had spent the last six weeks dormant and brooding, a houseplant with headphones on, wearing Jim's clothes. One week he'd eaten only food that was green, and little enough of that. Soon after, he unpacked all his storage boxes and nested amid the detritus of his scholarly life, rearranging history--this remained an abandoned work in progress. This past week, Jim usually came home to the sound of tribal chanting patterned onto hissing cassette tapes and Blair staring trancelike at the television, dark hair clouded across a couch pillow, lamps off.

To Blair's remark, Jim could at first only nod. But through this gesture he entered the mirror of his father, who'd unknowingly taught him how to turn away from others, not meeting their eyes, head bent as if there were more important things to focus on, like the cost of apples.

There was nothing more important.

Jim straightened his head, breaking the padlocked curve of his neck to look at Blair. "You take all the time you need," he said. It was what he'd repeated over the past six weeks, whenever Blair got anxious and reinforcement seemed called for. But he said it again, this time as an order to be obeyed, and caressed Blair's jaw in public and didn't care about anything else in the world.

Blair smiled faintly, the shadowed angles in his face rearranging to accommodate the movement. "I will, you know."

"Good."

"I'm just warning you."

"You do that," Jim said, as they put the bagged apples in the cart and began moving again.

"Spiritual journeys don't come with flight plans."

"Just let me know when we land."

After a moment no longer than it takes for a synapse to fire and a thought to jump, Blair said, "You know, I still can't find anything useful on the web about those snakes. They're indigenous to Borneo, but try finding _Borneo_ on the web--the real deal, not tourist crap."

The snakes again. They had a way of sliding into conversation, deceptively harmless non sequiturs. Jim had learned to treat any mention of them matter-of-factly, along with every other dark form lurking beneath Blair's words. "Library's always there."

"I suppose so."

They ambled on, Blair pushing the cart, Jim plucking stuff from the shelves. Their task savored of the ordinary, and Jim could have stayed in the market all night if it meant hearing Blair complain about the price of butter and coffee with a grad student's cultivated resentment.

"A full bag of coffee," Jim urged, when Blair stopped the beans halfway. Pep the kid back up, Jim thought.

"I'm going to mix it with hazelnut."

Jim pulled a face. "Get some Kona for me, then. Uncut."

"Settle down. You'll get your steaming cup of drug."

Standing back to back with Blair, Jim tossed paper towels in the cart. "Better than heroin. And we can stay organic."

"To think I taught you that word."

"You should be proud. The other day at Wonder Burger I asked if they used conscious coffee."

Blair turned and tweaked up a skeptical but hopeful brow. "Yeah?"

Jim maintained a straight face as long as it took to admit, "No."

Blair smacked his arm, then said thoughtfully, "I've trained you well, though, haven't I."

In another time that comment, truth or not, would have earned the kid a smack in return, but Jim just made an agreeable noise. He strove to dwell in the heart of this banter, sustain it as long as he could. Despite the febrile cacophony that supermarkets usually held for his senses, he'd lost his earlier headache and was freshly grounded.

"You still on eleven?" asked his mind-reader.

"No," Jim said. "I feel better."

*****

Better still was arriving home at last, walking in with their arms full of grocery bags, Blair trying to nudge a drooping loaf of bread in place with his chin. The loft was quiet, television and stereo shut off. A single lamp's subdued glow cast only a dim reflection on the balcony doors, leaving visible the skyline across the bay.

Jim dumped bags and case files, flicked on lights, and returned to the elevator to get the rest of their haul. As usual, the bags from the Holy Artichoke smelled better than the rest--the sandpapery red scent of tomatoes, basil sharpening the air--rekindling his vow to some day go all the way on the Blair Sandburg organic trip. Any resistance he had left was futile, mere habit. They bought most of their produce there anyway, along with herbs, soap, and various other eco-friendly things that Blair used on principle and that Jim had come to sensually prefer. Well trained was right. He returned inside with the remaining goods, kicking the door shut behind him with an outstretched shoe.

In the kitchen, Blair was putting groceries away, his body an exercise of lean muscle. They took their time, working together, and then Jim up came behind the other man as he folded bags and smoothed them with his square, tough hands. He put his own hands on Blair's waist, stomach, slid them around up to his chest, under the layers to a cotton tee-shirt warmed by skin. Face siding to face, he brushed his lips over unruly crescents of hair that broke rank from their sharp sideburn. He absorbed Blair's tension, kissed further and drew one hand up to hold his face, to turn it. Everything smelled of basil and Jim was aroused, becoming erect. Blair let his face be turned upward. His eyes were closed, and Jim thumbed the crude scars that curved along his cheekbones. He only meant to be tender, but his roaming hand stroked down Blair's throat, to his chest, nipples, the bisecting line of his body. Soon they were both breathing heavily, the air between them thick with rising heat. Jim hadn't let himself go this far before in showing his desire so bluntly.

"Do you. . .do we have to. . . ." Blair said, voice wavering on a drawn breath.

"No, shhhh." Jim nuzzled. "No." He kissed Blair's ear and it reddened under his touch.

"I just want. . . ."

"I know." Jim held him tightly and left off kissing to press a more simple assurance of flesh to flesh. "It's good. It's all good."

Blair turned and tucked his head under Jim's chin. They wrapped themselves together, and Jim rubbed Blair's back with his palms.

"We could do that. . .what we talked about," Blair said, the words an umber vibration across Jim's right collarbone.

"Don't rush," Jim said, almost groaning at the thoughts stirred by Blair's suggestion.

"I think you're ready to pop," Blair said, and his words tickled across Jim's nerves again, wry and quiet in a way that made him ache.

"I can pop later."

"Maybe later tonight," Blair said tentatively.

"Yeah." The word was provoked out of him in a gasp, and Jim made himself draw back. "If you want. Yeah."  The need in his voice was so low and raw he could barely force the words out. He could tell Blair heard it too.

"Tonight," Blair said, swallowing.

Jim took the other man's shoulders in a gentle grip. "You just do what you want to do," he said, "no more. No further."

Blair jerked his head in a single, abrupt nod and eased himself away. "I think I'm going to take a bath."

"Go ahead."

Jim made dinner, timing the job as best he could to what he estimated would be the length of Blair's bath. As the water rushed, he chopped onions and peppers; when the taps were shut off with a squeaking plaint of pipes, he cut strips of chicken. He dropped them in marinade as the tap plinked against the lapping tub water. And then it was quiet and he busied himself with setting the table, rearranging the newly stocked contents of the fridge, swiping the counters. He got a beer and went to lean outside the bathroom. The door was closed. Through its cracks eked the curled, burnt air of candles and incense.

The first time Blair had done this, weeks ago, he'd carried in a double handful of votives almost defiantly while Jim sat hunched on the edge of the couch watching football with blind eyes, trying not to make Blair feel more self-conscious about whatever ritual cleansing he needed to perform. Jim hadn't required explanation; the act made sense to him despite new age trappings. He kept thinking he might be invited in, and had prepared himself for the idea, so that he could go readily and sit on the floor next to the tub and do anything Blair asked. Soaping, soothing. . .something. He hadn't been invited yet, though, and as time passed he'd grown less sure he'd know what to do if he was. His imagination, influenced by previous romantic experiments with Carolyn, but also by memories of bathing Stephen when he was little, created a hybrid scenario based on mingled, discomforting expectations: cold tile and brightly scented candles, washcloths and gooseflesh, soap rosettes and sore knees. And, above all, self-consciousness.

Then there was the chanting. He didn't know how he was supposed to respond if Blair began to croon and rock right in front of him, as he did when alone. Jim's stomach had already tightened anticipatorily as he listened for the silence within the bathroom to crack apart. Blair's husky voice came as suddenly as it always did, murmurs interspersed with the lapping water, making the hairs on Jim's neck prickle. Eyes closed, he held the cool beer bottle to his forehead and sighed.

The phone rang and he answered it tersely before he recognized the caller. It was Gretchen, one of Blair's few grad-student pals who'd stuck with him after the dissertation debacle. He got the impression she'd spoken to Blair recently, and he gratefully took her message down with quick swipes of his pen; her phone number and a few book titles. "It's good to hear from you," he said, though he barely knew her. Her speechless surprise carried through to him over the phone. "Blair will be glad to hear from you," he added, making this up with no real certitude, willing it to be so.

Hanging up, Jim was touched again with a momentary sense of normalcy that prompted him to walk around the living room, straightening pillows and flicking on lamps. The light drenched the room in color, the red bricks and wooden floorboards taking on new warmth. Things are good, things are okay, he thought. We get phone calls. From the bathroom, Blair's chant was almost lulling. Jim turned on the stereo, wavered between putting on a random CD from Blair's current stack and one of his own, finally chose Santana to prolong his relaxed mood. He made a few more circuits of the loft, inspecting for dry plant soil, tossing a few magazines into their basket, then pausing at the balcony doors where he stared at the gleaming array of lights across the curvature of dark water. He could see into distant, private rooms if he chose, but he didn't want a vision that sharp tonight.

Eventually as he stood there, the door to the bathroom opened and Blair padded out, trailing with him a breeze of moistened candle-fragrant air. Jim watched his reflection in the glass and watched Blair watching, and then Blair stuck out his tongue rather experimentally and Jim turned with a brilliant grin.

"Whoa, play that beam down, Jim." Blair's eyes had mischief in them.

If Jim prayed, he would have then, and for nothing more than the status quo preserved in glass and time. "Dinner won't take long," he said. "I'll throw it on."

"Well, I'll throw some clothes on." Blair headed for the stairs in his towel.

 _Do you have to_ , Jim almost asked aloud. But he lightly bit his tongue and went to the kitchen, saying nothing instead. In short minutes, Blair retraced his steps, bare-footed, wearing Cascade PD sweats and a loose black sweater, both belonging to Jim.

"Think I'll make a fire," said Blair and did with efficiency.

"Gretchen called," Jim said.

Blair wandered over, leaned a hip against the counter, and reviewed the contents of the skillet. There was a congenial, lazy cant to his posture which said he was inclined to let Jim do all the cooking that night. "Yeah, she was going to call back about some books." He picked up the note, read it, set it back on the counter without further comment.

"That's great, Chief."

"There's nothing great about it," Blair rebutted sharply. "It's a phone call. An everyday event. Two people talking. Books."

Jim winced inwardly, a constriction of cheeks and tongue as he regretted his offhand words. He could never tell anymore when Blair might decide he was being coddled, but he'd made a conscious decision not to guard his speech every second. An occasional snap wouldn't kill him, and frankly he took heart from every scrap of crankiness Blair threw his way. He returned a pointed look to Blair's irked one. "Got it."

"Good." Blair went to the fridge, stared as if dissatisfied into its interior, then pulled out a jug of water and poured a glass. His mood didn't last, and he butted up against Jim next to the stove, friendly and apologetic in a bodily way. Jim wanted to put an arm around him but was stirring chicken with a wooden spoon so he just let himself be butted, smiling at the touch.

"This weekend I thought I'd rig that pole for planters like we talked about," Jim said later over dinner.

"Talked about when?"

Jim considered. "Last summer?"

Blair showed dry affection with his eyes. "Sure you want to jump into this?"

"Wise guy," said Jim, before sliding a forkful of chicken in his mouth. Chicken and beer and soy sauce made a strange, angular heat on his tongue, introducing a skew of synesthesia. Once he would have kept this to himself if possible, but now he immediately divulged it to Blair because he knew it would capture his interest. As Blair listened intently and poked him with questions, Jim tried to describe how the orange tones of the lamplight tasted like soy sauce and the fork handle sort of hummed, elaborating on these details until he could not entirely separate honesty from bullshit, because once you tried to put such matters into words words failed, which is why he usually preferred not to.

"That's cool," Blair said as Jim wound down his briefing about chicken and tingling fork tines. "That hasn't happened in a while. Not that you've mentioned."

"Sometimes it happens for just a second or two. I don't always remember to mention it," Jim admitted.

"Huh." Blair had stopped eating to listen, and now slumped back in his chair and traced greasy patterns around his plate with one fingertip. The remains of his chicken, peppers, and onions began assembling via his pushed finger into an intricate sort of hieroglyph.

Jim watched with a noncommital gaze. Within him was a residual child who'd been raised not to play with his food, and he balanced on the edge of delivering a rebuke. But then he thought of his father again and made himself look at Blair's face. The impulse passed. He reached out and wrapped Blair's finger within his grip and massaged from knuckle to nail. They twined fingers, each of them watching. Jim could feel the subdermal trembling of Blair's nerves.

"Simon said--" Jim began, then paused. He'd hit the wrong note and Blair was grinning. Jim gave a brief smile and hand-squeeze back. "He said that Judy Taylor offered to schedule some sessions with you. She's the department counselor."

Blair's face resumed a subtle, familiar frown. "I know who she is."

"I know you said you didn't want--"

"I don't want any therapy."

Jim tried to make light of this. "Funny, I always thought that was your childhood hobby." Blair didn't answer right away. He was looking down at the table, shoulders slumped. Jim ached with love and frustration.

"It's different now," Blair said. "This is different." He looked up, face held tight and blue eyes intense, a bit scary to Jim. "What I was saying, about going deep. Jim, I _saw_ things. This meant something. Not all experiences can be explained by Western psychology."

"You don't have to go to some traditional headshrinker, Blair. You're the one always talking about alternative therapies. Anything, Blair. Anything you want."

"I want this."

Jim swallowed. He wanted to pull his fingers away; it was his first impulse. Not doing so took an act of will. "What is _this_ , exactly. When are we going to talk about _this_." His voice came out low and flat, but angrier than he'd intended.

Blair was the one to draw back his hand, break their grip. He gave Jim a hurt look. Accusing. "We've talked."

" _You've_ talked. About snakes and goats and spirit walks. And you've--you've chanted." Guilt gnawed at Jim, under the surface of anger. He hadn't meant to disparage these things that Blair took so seriously, things that were bound up with his hurt. He took a deep breath and fought for calm. "I don't really know what's going on."

"Well, that's the first time you've asked," Blair retorted with a touch of old spark and spirit.

Jim folded readily. It was true. He'd spent the last six weeks communicating with Blair through physical comfort, silences, symbolic gestures. And if Blair had shown more convincing signs of healing, this would have been enough for Jim. But Blair wasn't healing as Jim had expected, and it wasn't enough.

Now he nodded. "I'm sorry." Talk to me, he thought.

"So. . ." Blair blew out a breath, looked edgy. "You want to talk. . .okay. Um. Kind of zero to sixty, but okay. Here's what I think. See, I don't know how much you know about this, from Incacha. I mean, we've talked before about shamanism, but I wouldn't expect you to remember all the details. It's a pretty common concept that if you're disposed to shamanism and you don't follow its course, you'll fall ill, and sometimes it's physical and sometimes it's a spiritual malaise. And that's where I've been for a while; it's been growing on me, because I ignored the calling. Then this happens, and _bam_ , it's like an infernal initiation, an archetypal experience of descent and psychic dismemberment, the dialog with spirits, the ascent into the sky. When I was there, strapped to the bed--I mean, the first time that guy fucked me--I wasn't really _all_ there. I was in the journey, and it was like this snake burrowing inside me. And then one of the spirits thrust a spear into me, and the snakes swallowed my organs. I was trapped inside my body, kind of dead in a living body or maybe alive in a dead body. I remember screaming. . . ."

Blair trailed off for a moment, and Jim felt an urgent need to stop him, to shut him up entirely before he went any further. He hadn't known what to expect but it hadn't been this.

"All this time passed while I was on the journey. I was all by myself. I was lying there looking up and saw this white globe, I was seeing this hole and it was, it was the sky--I was lying in the bottom of this deep pit. And then the spirits came back and held me down. It, it hurt. A lot. They cut open my head and washed my brains, so I'd be clean inside to divine mysteries of the spirits, and on my skin they carved th--this--the secret language of the dead--"

"Blair." Jim grabbed for his hand, unable to listen any more and determined to break the other man's increasingly trancelike monologue.

"--and they cut out my heart--"

"That's enough," Jim said, coming up out of his chair. He took Blair's face between his hands and drew his attention. Blair, finally interrupted, gave him a surprised look.

"What?"

Jim was brought up short by that simple question. From some impulse he couldn't identify he knelt down next to Blair's chair like a man about to propose, and took Blair's hands in his. Blair looked down at him warily, his hair hanging forward in a soft tumble, as Jim began to speak with an earnest tone and quiet forcefulness he felt sure Blair would respond to.

"Blair, you were raped. This wasn't some kind of shamanistic initiation. It was just rape. Not, not just rape, I don't mean that, but it sure as hell wasn't any kind of mystical experience. And I--" He'd been going to say a hundred things, promises to help, to have and to hold, but Blair jerked away violently, skidding his chair back and then sending it flying with a kick.

"Fuck you!" he yelled. "Fuck you, _fuck_ you!"

Jim rose to his feet and held out his hands in the traditional gesture of placation. "Blair, I'm--"

"You don't know a fucking thing, not a single fucking thing! You don't know anything about my experiences, like you can just say they're not mystical or meaningful because _you_ say so, you _decree_. You think you're the only one who has special powers, you, you're invested with some spiritual license? You think you can just blow off this whole thing, sweep it under the rug like you'd do with your senses if you thought you could get away with it? Well, fuck you! Fuck your stupid suburban hang-ups and your sentinel vision and your whole fucking life!"

He slammed off into his old room, kicking the chair again on his way before disappearing behind his closed door with a bang. He hadn't slept in there for weeks, not since getting back from the hospital. Jim's gut was knotted with anxiety and renewed anger, less at Blair than at the situation and the evil sons-of-bitches who'd done this to him.

Sighing, Jim cleared the table and stacked their dishes in the sink. He stood there looking at the plates, spending far longer than necessary trying to decide if he should immediately wash them. After two or three crawling minutes he walked away from the sink and sat on the couch. He dropped his head back against the cushion and he stared at a spot on the far edge of the ceiling where a tiny mite was crawling across the plaster. He listened to Blair, who was crying and breathing heavily against his pillow. Eventually, without a plan, Jim got up and went to Blair's door. He knocked gently. When no answer came, he turned the knob with a soft click and went inside.

Blair lay on his side, loose hair a landslide across his hidden face. Jim picked his way with care through the boxes and their loose debris, treasures of an academic, itinerant life. He sat down next to Blair and stroked his hair away, tucking it behind one ear. Blair's eyes were wet with tears and he wouldn't look at Jim. For a minute, Jim did nothing but touch him, caressing his head and cheek. Blair sniffled, face still set in resistant lines.

"I'm sorry," Jim said. He couldn't remember another time when he'd apologized so often and so easily.

"What does that mean, sorry," Blair asked.

Jim thumbed one of Blair's brows where it tapered finely at the edge. He was a thirty-one year old man, almost thirty-two, but he looked terribly young to Jim. And, terribly, older. "What do you want it to mean?"

Blair blinked wetly and turned his head, then rolled a little; the curve of his face was met by the cradle of Jim's hand. Jim didn't let go of the touch.

"You don't have to believe me." Blair sounded muted and resigned. "I mean, it'd be nice, but. . .I just want you to let me work this out. You have to trust me."

Believing a crazy story like that was damn hard, Jim thought but didn't say. "Incacha. . .he said once that a shamanistic vocation takes years to develop. And it's a lifelong practice."

"You said you'd give me time."

A few months, Jim had thought. A few months to pull it together, six months to regain steady footing, a year to gain some perspective. Now it was to be years, a lifetime--of what? Of shamanistic rituals and dark rooms--chanting and brooding? He met Blair's eyes and a dozen conflicting feelings tore at his heart. He'd wanted to make things better for Blair, to control the tailspin of his friend's life, but he was beginning to get the message that his role would be more difficult. He was being asked to sit by, to wait and accept; to watchfully protect his partner while said partner went voluntarily around the bend. Well, he'd seen this kind of thing before. Seen cops go off, spiraling downward into drunkeness and dull tragedy while their partners defended them from nosy sergeants and the phone calls of ex-wives. This was different, though. This was Blair.

Any promise he made would be a difficult one.

"I will give you time," Jim answered. "And anything else you need. But I'm not going to be able to watch and do nothing if you--" He hesitated. "If you were going to hurt yourself, I wouldn't sit by."

"I'm not going to hurt myself, Jim," Blair said. He was calm now. "But to be a shaman means leaving the middle of the road behind. I've been holding back so far. There's a lot more to this I want to explore."

These words did nothing to ease Jim's mind. During the eighteen months he'd lived with the Chopec, he'd been up close and personal with Incacha, sharing his ayahuasca, watching with newly enhanced vision and a buzzing head as the shaman moaned and wailed and incorporated his animal familiars, sometimes crawling around the fire on all fours, acting out the spirit of the jaguar, or roiling across the dust on his belly like a snake. Sometimes Patacusi, Incacha's juvenile apprentice, would join his teacher. It had been a different time and place, and Jim had accepted their behavior--and his own--by necessity, knowing it to be integral to the rituals of tribal life. He wasn't sure he could be so accepting if Blair's trip took him that far.

"Just let me know what you need, Chief," Jim said quietly. "You tell me, I'll get it for you."

"Really?" Blair sniffed with interest. "What if I told you I wanted some peyote?"

"I'll make you a deal. Give it a y--a couple of years, two years, and if you aren't getting there under your own steam, I'll find what you need."

"Yeah, okay. Man, I'd like to see that." Blair smiled slightly, then the smile faded. "I don't want to get you into any trouble, though."

"Well, we've got a while before we have to worry about it." Jim ran the back of three folded fingers along Blair's lightly stubbled jaw, at which Blair gave a small, stifled yawn.

"Think I'll take a nap. . .wanna join me?"

Jim was not at all tired, but accepted the invitation anyway. He removed his shoes and stretched out awkwardly on the bed next to Blair, spooning against him in the mattress's warm declivity and wondering if the frame would hold. Blair snugged back against Jim's hips, and Jim enfolded him. Desire, which had steeped and strengthened for weeks, welled up, spilling through the dry parched earth of his body. He tried to adjust his hips so that Blair would not feel the hardness of his erection.

"It's okay, Jim," Blair said in his low voice.

Jim rubbed his hand up and down Blair's chest, instinctively soothing despite Blair's assurance. He pressed in, nudged one leg behind Blair's, wanting to rock against his warm body but not yet daring. Blair took Jim's hand and held it still against his belly, up under the soft flannel where his skin was bare and taut as a drum. Jim's hand splayed there, across a line of tickling hair and marks of scar tissue. He'd waited so long that his need had grown keen and sharp as the knives that had marked Blair's flesh. Now and then--more often lately--he thought about what he wanted to do, how he'd kiss his way across Blair's body, then retrace its length with his mouth open, giving into his appetite at last. He'd need to be gentle, but thought he could make it good for both of them. The hunger and waiting only buoyed his certainty. And buoyed other things.

"You feel good," said Blair muzzily.

"I do," Jim affirmed, kissing Blair's ear.

Blair slept, and Jim lay awake, senses leashed to him. He didn't hear the phone the first time it rang, but by the time it rang ten minutes later he'd surfaced and tuned in. The machine picked up. _Detective Ellison, I've been trying to reach you_. _This is Charlotte Koehn from the District Attorney's office_. _I'm calling about the Brewster case and wanted to try and meet with you before Monday_. _I know it's short notice, but an issue has come up_. _If you can make it tonight, I'll be here late_. _Otherwise, I'd like to try and get together tomorrow sometime_. _You can reach me at 499-7139_. _That's direct to my extension_.

Jim withdrew carefully from the bed and padded out to return the call. He listened while Koehn briefly outlined a hitch in a witness statement that contradicted his notes on the crime scene. She wanted him to come down and see the rough sketch the witness had made, and compare it to his own. He agreed, masking reluctance in professionalism. After hanging up he debated waking Blair; instead, he left a note taped to Blair's door where he couldn't miss it, and another on the counter just in case he did.

Before he left he checked all the doors and windows, including the one in Blair's old bedroom whose light lay flung like a blanket across the younger man's sleeping form. Windows were breakable. He tried not to think about this; pulled a real blanket across Blair. His heart rate was steady, and Jim hoped he would have no nightmares. It had been three days since the last. A good sign, he thought. He locked the front door tight, then paused with his hand resting on its cold metal, wondering whether he should go back in and wake Blair up, have him set the chain. Though he decided against this, it took him a minute.

He descended the stairs rather than in the elevator, treading lightly and halting on each landing to listen, to take stock of the building. All was quiet. Outside the building, he discovered that it was raining. What to others might sound gentle was to him an encompassing hiss and roar against the earth, as if countless ants were chewing away steadily at its surface. _Dial it down_ , he reminded himself. He heard the words in Blair's voice, which comforted him even though his adherence to the command wasn't entirely successful. Sight was in league with hearing tonight. The world was sharply delineated, as if he were seeing everything in the moment after a camera flash, a layer of faded light across darkness. A moment never actually sustained, except for him. Vision hurt. Driving would be interesting.

Not for the first time lately, he had to acknowledge that when he left Blair's side, his senses bent themselves out of joint. It had been more or less this bad for six weeks. Nature's way of telling him something, but he'd been slow to pick up on the message. He wished that he'd taken more time off, that he hadn't let Blair talk him into returning to work so soon. Now it was too late; the crisis period was over and requesting more time away from work would seem odd, might lead people to wonder about Blair--to question whether he was getting worse instead of better.

Maybe sometime after the holidays they could take a trip, though, thought Jim as he walked to the truck. He mused on this idea all the way across town. They could go someplace warm and tropical. Cancun. Rio. Lima. Someplace touristy. The Virgin Islands. Jamaica. Aruba. Fruity drinks. Novelty postcards. Tour boats and coconut trees. These images drifted across his mind, at odds with the wet, inky night.

He zoned once on the way, like a tired truck driver getting white line fever, drifting to one side of the road as he noticed a particular raindrop zigging slowly down the windshield. Luckily there were no other cars nearby, moving or otherwise, and he caught himself as the wheels skidded against the curb, then swung the truck back into its lane. It was a relief to reach the dull modern building which housed the offices of the District Attorney and make his way safely inside. Even this late, he could hear a half dozen voices from the first floor alone, reaching him from deep within the warren of offices. The halls of justice smelled of burnt coffee, cleaning fluid, fresh grey carpeting. And bodies. Warm bodies.

After signing in for the security guard, Jim made his way back to Koehn's office. Its door was cracked open; a panel of frosted glass ran down one side of the wall along the frame, whitened with light from a lamp just behind it. Through the door's gap he could see the ADA, a fortyish woman with short brown hair and stylish eyeglasses. He knocked and watched her head raise from the folder she was studying.

"Come in."

Jim entered and introduced himself. He was aware of Koehn's calm, interested perusal while they exchanged chit-chat. Near her computer monitor was a picture of her with a woman, not a sister. As their gazes met intermittently above their words, Jim wondered if he was developing gaydar, and if he were pinging other people's now that he'd dragged himself a few inches out of the closet.

"Carter's sketch is on the bulletin board there by your foot," said Koehn.

Jim sat down across from her in a vinyl, lime-green chair and picked up the board from where it lay against the desk.

"I've put a copy of yours on it as well. You can see where I've marked the difference. . ." She outlined them and read from the notes she'd made of her recent interview with Russell Carter. "He's elaborated on his statement," she said sourly, and went on to compare excerpts from his original statement against her notes. ". . .and I do place greater weight on the validity of your own sketch than on his. But it presents us with a possible difficulty if they catch it on cross." She paused. "With this in mind do you feel that you retain full confidence in your recollection of the scene?"

"Absolutely," Jim said. "There was no bicycle. I think I'd have noticed," he added dryly. He put the bulletin board down.

Koehn looked gloomy. "Agreed. But it concerns me, as I'm sure you understand. He's our best witness. Or was. A bicycle--the entire question of who it belongs to, what was it doing there--if the defense gets hold of this they may open up a line toward reasonable doubt and drive down it hard."

"You think he's got an angle?"

"I wish I did. That would be easier to handle. We could treat him as a hostile witness. He seems to genuinely believe that he's just remembered this. I sat here and watched him invent it out of thin air, frankly. But he wasn't conscious of it and he didn't show any sign during rehearsal that he'd back down if pressed."

"Mmm," Jim said. There was a little silence in which Koehn appeared to be brooding and Jim wondered if he was supposed to say anything else. "Well, this is your bailiwick, counselor," he finally noted. "Was there anything else you needed from me?"

Koehn's focus snapped on him. "What? No, oh, I'm sorry. Perhaps I didn't need to call you down here. I thought seeing the sketches together might jog your memory. I appeciate that you came at this time of night."

Jim nodded, fidgeted. Her tone was polite and conclusive, allowing him leave to go, but another stretch of silence occurred.

"Was there something else?" Koehn asked. "Something. . .bothering you about the case?" She made the question neutral, but Jim sensed she wouldn't be thrilled if there were.

"No. . .no." He straightened in his chair, pushed toward the edge. "No." He cleared his throat, stared at the picture on her desk, then at her wall calendar, which displayed a red-hued canyon at sunset. The tenth of the month had been circled, said _Lorena's b-day_. His gaze traveled by this circuitous route back to her face. "Can I ask your opinion on something?"

"Professional?" At his nod, she said, "Sure."

"If the FBI and U.S. Marshals were cooperatively serving a federal warrant for organized crime charges in the district of New Jersey--but serving it here in Washington--would they have to deal with the U.S. Attorney's office here?"

"Well, if the Chief Deputy requested the help of the Marshals Service here in Washington to serve the warrant, then I don't see why it would be routed through a district office." Koehn absently drew a package of cigarettes out of a drawer as she spoke, then put them away again just as automatically, without lighting up. "Not if charges were brought within another district. I assume you're talking about a fugitive."

Jim shifted on the seat. "Yes. So if there were misconduct by the FBI or Marshals, it's unlikely the state attorney's office would begin an investigation?"

"I think an internal review would be more likely--or an investigation from the Attorney General's office. I doubt that would be conducted on a state level in such circumstances." Koehn had tracked down a package of gum from underneath a stack of messy folders, and offered Jim a stick which he declined. "Just out of curiosity, what type of misconduct are we talking about?"

"Failure to halt a felony assault. Prolonging a crisis situation because the suspect named on the warrant was not yet on the premises."

Koehn eyed him in a thoughtful, unmoved way. "Lay it out for me," she offered.

Jim hesitated, the muscles of his throat tightening like a noose around his voicebox, then retreated from the brink. "Maybe another time."

He left after perfunctory good-nights. Once in his truck, he didn't start it up right away, but sat with his hands on the steering wheel, staring out across the parking lot and into a distant office window where a man and woman were kissing in front of a shabby desk, their bodies saturated with fluoresence from the overhead lights.

He thought about rape. He thought about Blair's body and its scars, and wished for a moment he'd killed DeLillo, FBI or not; and that he'd had the opportunity to kill the others. He regretted that they'd already been dead, though was glad Blair had been spared their abuse for even a few extra minutes. Part of him, the mechanism of conscience, knew these thoughts to be dangerous; the rest of him, simmering with unspent rage, still wanted someone to pay and pay hard. Other than DeLillo, the only one of their captors left alive was Enzo Cazzulati, whom he'd thought of as Grey, a seasoned mob soldier for the Righetti crime family. If anyone was going to be killed, Jim thought, it should be him. But Cazzulati would do time instead. Jim had no intentions of taking on the mob with Blair at stake.

The couple in the brightly lit office began plucking off each other's clothes between kisses. Jim, drawn from dark reflections, sighed and started the truck. Thinking of a case whose file he'd brought home, he decided to swing by the station and see if by slim chance a fax had come in from VICAP. Deferral, distraction, distance.

Day shift was long gone, swing shift nearing its close, when he arrived. The bullpen was dim, lit mostly by desk lamps. He nodded to a few faces as he went to his desk and checked his tray, which held nothing new. He ran through his phone messages, then moved around his desk and committed himself to his chair to read e-mail. The tidy arrangement of his desk substantiated his existence, as did the thick irrelevance of his inbox. Memos about holiday leave deadlines, annual benefits enrollment, and winter uniforms; task-force updates, virus alerts, departmental flu shot schedules, blood drive reminders. Civil bureaucracy was reassuring in its vast, solid dullness. He didn't much want to be here; he wanted with a deep, tidal pull to be at home with Blair. But sitting at his desk for just a little while helped. It was self-punishment before relief, like working out hard for an hour before breakfast, on an empty stomach.

He was just winding up, standing at his desk to pull on his jacket, when Simon materialized at his elbow. The top button of his pristine white shirt had been undone, signal of a day's end, and he had his keys in hand.

"What are you doing back here?"

"Just leaving."

Simon glanced back down the hallway from which he'd come, which echoed with the click of approaching heels. "Listen, Jim, I don't know if you'd heard, but--"

"Hello, Jim." Carolyn walked in, straightening a chic black coat around herself with an economy of gestures. "We're going out for drinks. Come along."

Jim rediscovered a needle of antagonism in his heart and gave a crooked smile to Simon and Carolyn. "Sorry, I've really got to--"

"Hey, Ellison."

A hand clapped his shoulder. He'd been flanked by Joel and Megan. It was Joel who'd spoken but Megan who caught his attention.

"Conner," he said, with a more genuine smile. She twitched, and for a split second he feared she was going to hug him, but then she aborted the movement, smiled back instead and shook his hand. Hail fellow well met. Her eyes were thoughtful, though, and sad. She'd heard. Well, no surprise there.

"Jim. Good to see you. You're looking well."

"You too. You just get back?" He felt Carolyn watching them both.

"Yes. I drove across from New Orleans. Quite a country you have here." Megan said this in the same mild tone of voice another woman might use to compliment a garden. "Well paved."

"Now, you are coming out for a drink with us, right, Jim?" Joel asked. His earnestness made Jim flinch inwardly.

"I don't really--"

"One drink, Jim," Megan said winningly. "On me."

Simon was hearty, Carolyn speculative, Joel encouraging, Megan bright and kind. They spoke over one another, swarmed around him, carried him along to the elevators and then down into the garage; Simon invited him to ride along to the bar in his Saturn. Jim put his foot down at that and followed in the truck, riding with the window down to dissipate the smells of Lady Stetson and Polo and Fendi, wishing he'd left the office five minutes earlier. He thought about calling Blair, but held back on the hope that he was sleeping. Waking him would be a crime.

Duffy's Tavern was smoky and dim and everything else that a cop bar should be. The interior from floor to ceiling was surfaced in scarred wood, the pool tables were cheap, the jukebox played _good_ music, and the beer was beer. By the time Jim arrived, the others were settled in at a table, picking at peanuts and waiting for their drinks. When theirs came, he ordered a Sam Adams and declined offers to share nachos with Megan and pizza with Joel.

He drank his beer in sparing sips and listened while the others talked. Megan told stories about her security consultant work and recent cross-country trip, Carolyn about her moving plans and new job. Simon and Joel, well-mannered squires, asked all the appropriate questions to keep the conversation moving.

"I grew fond of this local brew, Dixie Blackened Voodoo Lager," Megan said. "Such a colorful culture down in New Oh'leenze." She mangled her drawl with happy disregard.

"You can find that here," said Joel. "Some of the larger supermarkets should carry it."

"Didn't you find it awfully hot?" Carolyn asked. "I can never bear to be outside in New Orleans more than five minutes."

She'd been there only twice that Jim knew of. He looked at her tan expanse of breastbone, the gold hoops gleaming on her earlobes, and the curve of her mouth which was lipsticked with the color of dried blood or dead autumn leaves. She saw him looking and arched a brow as if she'd caught him at something that she'd expected, the trap of her knowledge. He redistributed his attention to Megan, trying to decide whether Carolyn had heard yet about the fishing trip. Had Simon told her, or Joel--could she have given him a look like that, so careless and mocking, if she'd heard any of the story? She'd have found a way to mention it, he thought, would have drawn him aside to express her concern. Or maybe not. Maybe they'd finally achieved enough distance that she could compartmentalize, as well as he always had.

"It's a lot of work, but I'm looking forward to it," Carolyn was saying. "And it's good to be in Cascade again."

"You have family here?" asked Megan.

"A brother and sister. Our parents live in Florida now." She focused on Jim. "That reminds me, Jim. I called your brother, Stephen. He's helping me find a house." Jim understood that she'd been speaking for an audience when she directed her next remarks to Megan. "Jim's brother is in real estate." She gave Jim a tiny smile. "He seems to be doing very well for himself now."

There was a pause. His cue, but Jim had no idea what he was supposed to say. "Yes." Another pause followed his acknowledgment.

"I'm glad," Carolyn said. "He deserves some success. He mentioned he's seeing a woman he works with--I think he said her name was Brittany."

"Bethany," said Jim.

"Bethany," she chimed in, a hair after his correction. She smiled Jim her thanks, as if they were complicit, a practicing couple; took a demure sip of beer, then said, "He mentioned something about the four of us getting together for dinner, said he'd call you."

Next to her, Simon cleared his throat but said nothing. Jim stared at her expressionlessly, not quite believing his ears. They were nominally friends now, but the prerogative of an ex sure as hell didn't extend that far. He made a mental note to rip Stephen a new one when he saw him.

"Oh, you must be Jim's wife," said Megan, rolling the words off her tongue with a lilt of sudden comprehension. "Ex-wife, I mean." A smile. "I didn't make the connection before." She cocked her head of dark curls and made a frank show of examining Carolyn. "You're not at all like he described."

"I'm sure," Carolyn said dryly.

Jim swallowed his own dry laugh. How easy it would be to fall back into the flat cadences of marriage and argument. He looked down into his bottle, found he was almost done. Thank god. His head was beginning to spasm in time to the clicking of pool balls and he could smell the full extent of the bar, from kitchen to john to dumpster. Conversation eddied around him, and he'd begun planning a quick and casual exit, but then Joel persuaded him to have one more beer. He relented and sat a while longer, his sense of vigilance easing slightly in the company of friends and idle talk.

"--son of a bitch drove his Cadillac through the front window," said Simon, right through the--"

"--alligator in the ventilation shaft." Megan tossed a red peanut in her mouth. "Didn't know you Yanks had those kind of pest control problems. Course it was a tiny critter, not like the crocs we have at home. Now those are some big--"

"--crowds of homeless everywhere, reporter running around, alligator on the loose," Joel said, shaking his head. Carolyn was laughing, attention tugged in three directions as she tried to follow the story. "Then this guy comes out of nowhere, starts firing at one of the perps--"

"And Sandy grabs him from behind, pulls his arm down--"  
   
"Wait, wait." Carolyn coughed, thumped her chest on another laugh. "Sandy--Sandy who?"

"Blair," said Joel.

"Blair, sorry," said Megan, stealing a look at Jim and faltering. "And, er, then it sort of went on from there. Bang, bang, chase and capture, all's well that end's well." Cheeks pink, she raised her bottle toward the center of the table in a haphazard toast, then gulped beer.

"Sandy. Oh, that's priceless," said Carolyn, still chuckling.

Under the table, Megan squeezed Jim's knee. The last time someone squeezed his knee in that way, they'd been signaling the arrival of a wanted coke dealer. He gave her an inquiring blink, then answered her smile as he realized her gesture meant nothing but comfort. When he broke the exchange he caught Carolyn's sharp eye; her face no longer held amusement. Only then did Jim, amazed, realize she was jealous.

His cell phone rang as the others were ordering a new round of drinks; he waved the waitress off.

" _Jim_ ," said Blair into his ear, voice sonorous but small.

Jim checked his watch, a reflex of momentary guilt. Eleven thirty-five. "Hi," he said, swiveling to one side in his chair and pushing slightly away from the table. "Did you get my note?"

" _Yeah_. _You said 'back in about an hour', except you didn't say when you left_."  Blair drew in a soft breath. " _I'm also taking off points for handwriting. But I offer extra credit_."

Jim smiled against the phone. "I went by the station. Simon dragged me to Duffy's. I'm about to head out. Megan's gotten back in town." He stacked the sentences up randomly, like wooden blocks. Everything important he said was underneath the words.

" _Cool_ ," said Blair.

"You need anything from the store?" As soon as he asked he remembered they'd already had this conversation, already been shopping earlier; but the question was always on the tip of his tongue these days, as if there were some elusive item he could carry home to Blair that would fix things. A remedy of green tea ice cream, herbal soap, tonic water. And he understood the rule, one of many rules he'd absorbed from a clan of Ellisons, that when you were coming home late it was right that you offered your services, demonstrating that you'd go out of your way for love, even when it was raining, and a pain in the ass, and you were tired with a few drinks under your belt. Even when in all other ways you might be a son of a bitch.

" _No_. _You stopping again?_ "

"I wasn't planning on it."

" _Okay_. . . _I'll be in bed_."

Their bed, he meant. It was a motivational promise. Jim checked his watch again. "I'll be there in about fifteen minutes." In bed. Blair's hair like a vine growing across the pillow, his mouth waiting. They'd done nothing yet but kiss and hold each other, but from this moment his imagination was a lit fuse leading directly home to Blair. They said their goodbyes, and he shut off his phone, distracted with readiness.

"You taking off?" asked Simon.

Jim nodded and swept his gaze across the faces of his friends. Simon looked knowing, Joel sympathetic, Megan interested. Carolyn was frowning, a daub of confusion between her brows.

"Tell Blair I'll call him," said Megan.

"I will."

"Give Blair my best," said Joel.

Jim nodded.

"Yeah, tell Sandburg--" Simon hesitated. "Tell him I said hello," he finished uncomfortably.

"When," Carolyn asked, picking up her bottle and swinging it around in her precise fingers, "did you become so domesticated, Jimmy?" She was needling him, ignorant of her effect. "I don't think I ever had that kind of success getting you to run errands. I'll have to ask your little friend what the trick is."

Jim's hands gave a hitch as he pulled on his jacket. "I'd rather you didn't."

"Maybe we--" Megan began.

"Really, Jim." Carolyn was chiding now, shouldering back in her chair with the sloppy grace that she always developed at four beers. "What will people think?" Her question, though facetious, was calculated to provoke him. He stood to leave, ignoring her. "No more than they think now, I suppose," she went on. "But I'm sure you're seeing some nice woman who'll help you quell those rumors, right?"

"No," Jim said with deliberate stolidity, letting the stone of his word sink among them, seeing the tiny ripples it created but not caring. "Good night," he added, and received a chorus of relieved good-nights in return. Carolyn said hers along with the rest, perfunctory and brief, and yet Jim left feeling that she would have far more to say to him, given the chance.

*****

He wasn't in bed.

As Jim rose homeward in the elevator he tuned in to hear his favorite Paul Simon CD playing at a neighborly volume and when he walked in Blair was sitting next to the table, wearing only blue jeans, waiting. He sat cross-legged on a chair in the way that only a compact, limber man could achieve, facing the door, reading what Jim recognized as a paperback of Zen koans. Three white candles rested on the table, and the downstairs lamps were turned off.

In the moment before Blair looked up from the page, Jim captured a perfect, heightened vision of him in which the familiar and unfamiliar mixed: hair an unruly mane, naked chest overwritten with scars, cigar burns scattered across arms and belly and shoulders as if drops of something had fallen from the sky and scalded him. The word 'bitch' carved across his torso was easily discernible, edged with bright pink skin where it healed. His arms gleamed in the light, and on his chest Jim could see the pattern of hair finally growing out again, sparse and dark and messy, threading down across his stomach.

He was messy all over, and he'd stripped off his shirt to let Jim see him like this. Jim wanted him so badly it hurt. He shut the door behind him and locked it. He couldn't pretend to casualness; he skinned off his jacket and let it fall to the floor with his keys before going to Blair. He wore his gun but felt naked, his erection obvious through his jeans. His mouth was dry, because Blair was looking up at him with his beautiful ravaged face, its scars like a grooved diagram for where Indian warpaint should be applied.

They didn't say anything right away. Blair put his book down and his feet on the floor, opening himself up to Jim, who came and stood just between his legs and took handfuls of his soft hair. Blair hugged his waist and unexpectedly rubbed his cheek against Jim's belt. A prickling heat flared in Jim's face; raced along his nerves to reach every inch of skin, where it clung, a rash, a desperation. Shame and need. He was breathing heavily, fast. His hands felt clumsy and he longed to rub himself against Blair's face but couldn't. But Blair rubbed against him, then turned and pressed his lips to the sharp outline of Jim's cock.

Jim's left knee buckled and he caught at Blair, making a sound of warning or ecstasy, he didn't even know which. He steadied himself just enough to stay upright as Blair mouthed him through his jeans. Jim could feel himself, swollen and trapped, leaking hard into his briefs and soaking even the thick denim. He shuddered, close, driven closer each moment by Blair's lips.

"God, Blair," he said, voice harsh, loving so much that he felt he was going to die in madness, bleeding from the inside. "Blair, please--" His hand seized a spill of hair, closed on the curve of Blair's skull to draw him near. Blair opened his mouth and sucked at him awkwardly through his jeans, and Jim bucked once and came with a frantic, apologetic cry. His climax hurt and it was the best he'd had in six weeks. Longer.

He regained himself slowly, stroking Blair's hair with both hands, still so full of energy that the strands crackled against his palms. Then he sank to his knees. Blair stroked Jim's head now, tracing its contours, learning his ears and jaw. Jim closed his eyes with happiness and let him do this. They swayed and shifted closer. Jim slitted open his eyes and saw Blair's chest, a close rough wall. He looked up at Blair, who after a moment leaned down and kissed him.

Careful kisses, greetings.

Completely undone, Jim groaned. He slung a hand around the back of Blair's neck, hauled him in and kissed him again, struggling to stay gentle. Blair was just as effortful. They tried different movements with each other as if they were puzzle pieces, coming together, then disentangling with little touches. Jim kissed Blair's collar bone, closed his eyes again, inhaled.

"Tell me," he said. "If you want me to stop, tell me."

Blair breathed and didn't quite reply, but Jim felt him nod.

He kissed his way to Blair's left shoulder and kissed the first scar he found there, a twist of flesh a half inch in diameter. He skimmed his hands around the other man's back, held him closer, wanting to ease his tension. Blair murmured; his hair brushed Jim's shoulder as he bent his head. Unhurriedly Jim kissed him, shoulder to throat, throat to chest. His face burned furiously, stung with tenderness and lust and the feel of Blair's skin against his cheeks, the scrape of rough hairs against his own smoothness. He was getting hard again. He needed to unzip his jeans but the pain was better than the risk of ruining this, so he martyred himself with pleasure and brushed his lips across the scars on Blair's chest, then more boldly began tracing the letters with his tongue.

Blair made a gasping, uneven sound as Jim worked his way left to right and then tongued one nipple. It was already tightly stiff and he worried it further while Blair held his head in place and rocked breathlessly against him, throat giving up soft utterances that untethered Jim from reason. Encouraged, he latched more fiercely to Blair's chest, wanting this to feel good to Blair, wanting  
everything for him.

"Oh oh no, oh man, oh god," Blair whispered, clutching at him, thumbs almost digging into his ears.

Jim broke away to speak. "Should I stop--"

"No, oh, please, Jim--"

Jim swallowed Blair's low-pitched voice, felt it slide right down inside him like a bell of brandy. His cock was still trying to unfurl a second time in the tight confines of his jeans. He slid his head back across Blair's chest, cheeking its hard bones and planes, then kissed down to Blair's belly. He butted against it lightly with his forehead, and Blair obligingly softened back onto the chair, legs falling open a little further for him. Jim could hardly think straight, see straight.

"I've got to undo my jeans, sweetheart," he said, a plea.

"Yeah," Blair said. He licked his lips, nervous or excited. Jim couldn't tell. "Okay."

Jim, hand trembling, managed to pop the top button and get his zipper down. When he released  
himself he groaned. He took himself in hand and squeezed hard, forcing himself to ease down a few notches; he saw stars, but was successful. He looked up at Blair, whose blue eyes were on him in return, wide and hard to read.

"We don't have to stay here," Jim said. "We can go upstairs."

"No. Here. . .this is okay. I mean. Are you. . ."

"I'm good. This is good," Jim affirmed.

"Let's go upstairs," Blair decided in a tentative voice.

Jim nodded and got to his feet. He felt discomforted now, fully dressed, dick out, so he pulled his briefs up as best he could over its length; this didn't work very well, but it was a short trip. Blair blew out the candles and trailed behind Jim, until Jim reached and took his hand. When they reached the stairs, he nudged Blair ahead and ascended behind him, hands stroking his back. Most scars there were harder to see, a scrimshaw of whip-marks left by a thin slat of wood, but four more cigar burns had been laid into the skin. Eleven in all. Even Blair, for whom most glasses were half full, never said, _it could have been worse_.

Upstairs, they clung to each other for a minute and swayed, almost as if dancing. The CD was sliding into its last song. Jim believed he might have unabashedly let himself go, danced Blair in a slow circle to the music, if he hadn't been so conscious of his dick's rude ache between them. Instead he drew away to undress. Blair sat down on the edge of the bed and watched. Usually by the time Jim was getting ready for bed, Blair was already burrowed there under the covers, wearing sweatpants and a tee-shirt. He hoped Blair wasn't having second thoughts.

Blair watched until he was naked, then dropped his gaze. Jim hesitated, unsure what to say or do next. He went to put on a pair of loose boxers before returning to settle near the other man, but Blair got up right away, standing to remove his jeans. The movements of his hands were clumsy. Jim said nothing to interrupt him.

"Damn zipper," Blair said, voice filling the silence in the very moment that the quiet music below stopped, allowing Jim to hear all his nervousness. He pushed off his jeans, kicked them away, the gesture gauche but somehow defiant. Jim liked this indication of personality, could imagine a few years down the line how he'd wake up and put his foot into a sweater and complain about clothes left abandoned on the floor and Blair would mumble something cranky from the shores of sleep.

He drank in the sight of Blair. A glass half full. Blair shifted from one foot to the other.

"Come to bed," invited Jim.

Blair came, and they lay together. Jim had had weeks to grow accustomed to this intimacy, but this was the first time the other man was naked.

"Tell me what to do," Jim said, cupping his cheek, thumbing one of the straight scars under his left eye. "Or you could. . .whatever you want to do, you know you can do it."

"I liked what you were doing before."

That was all the prompting Jim needed to resume; he'd wanted this for too long. Blair was laid out for his kisses, and Jim gave as many as he could until his lips felt raw and every kiss became a sharp kick of pleasure to his balls. Blair gasped and breathed noisily but didn't speak, and this made him seem quieter than Jim had expected. His cock was half-woken, though, rolling now and then against his belly. Jim took it in hand; its heat and fullness weren't quite like his own, but felt good. He aligned himself alongside Blair, who opened his eyes as Jim leaned in for a kiss. He eased open Blair's mouth while lightly jacking him off below. When they broke a moment from kissing, Jim broke his grip as well, licked his hand, then returned it. Blair's eyes were dark and he breathed arousal.

"Let me make you feel good," Jim said. Ecstasy was gathering force in his own balls, tightening in sympathy with Blair's pleasure.

"It's good," said Blair. "Really good." He had regained a lazy, husky timbre of voice that Jim hadn't heard in a long time; he sounded the way he had the first time they'd lain down together, or the way he might have sounded a year ago after coming home from a date.

"Fuck my hand."

Blair gasped and arched once. Jim's pulse jumped in synch. He grazed his dick against Blair's thigh almost involuntarily and Blair shoved again into his hand. Jim stripped him fast, three times, then slowed his next few strokes. Blair thrashed and groaned, and Jim tongued that groan into his own mouth. He could smell the sweat of lust breaking across Blair's body, healthy, clean and sharp, could feel it on his skin. He desperately wanted to feel Blair come for him, and he quickened his eager rhythm until he felt the surge of heat and blood under his hand, until Blair's entire body was trying to surface from the sheets, then he slid his palm up higher and squeezed and worked his thumb up under the head. Blair groaned harshly and came just as he'd hoped, a forceful expulsion striping his belly and chest in a half dozen shots. Jim came at nearly the same time, stunned by the jerking response of his own organ which was triggered by nothing more than the sounds from Blair's throat and the seizure of his body.

Blair shook when done, and Jim, equally spent, held him and caressed his side.

"You came," Blair asked after a minute, craning to see.

"Yep." He met Blair's gaze as it was raised to him, opaque and blue. "Kind of messy."

"Oh." Blair smiled uncertainly.

Jim searched for words. "I can't believe that was the first time. . .it feels like a long time, being with you. A good long time," he amended.

"Yeah. I hear that."

"If it's that good and gets better, you'll kill me," Jim joked, but with warmth.

Blair looked rather satisfied. "In about fifty years, maybe. If you eat your vegetables."

"Sounds like a plan."

Jim drew up the blankets and Blair twisted around to shut off the light and then pressed back against him to be spooned. The heavy silk of him filled Jim's arms; when he slid one palm across his front he felt the short hairs prickle his skin, the furrowed scars under his fingers. Deep waves of breath washed against his hand. Blair was like a sea inside.

"When I was little I used to lie in bed like this," said Blair. His voice lapped at Jim's ears. "Seemed like my mom would always be in the next room with a bunch of friends, laughing and going on about the beauty of the universe. Probably a little high. Someone strumming a guitar. My mom, back then, she talked a lot about great people. She was looking for gurus, direction. Everyone was. She'd talk about some wise woman she met at the supermarket, or whoever was the great spiritual father of the week. I used to think when I grew up I'd be one of those people. I used to make up these fantasies I was an alien who'd taken human form. Except I kind of believed them, because I felt different. Special. I was here to deliver this great message that'd be revealed to me later."

He stopped. Jim continued to stroke his chest with a soft, rhythmic feathering, listening to his silence as attentively as he'd listened to his words.

"Star Trek has a lot to answer for, man."

Jim pushed past the corona of hair that bathed his face, to press his cheek against Blair's own. "You are special."

"Yeah. I read your mind. I knew you'd say that."

Jim readjusted them both, pulling Blair around so they conspired together on their shared pillow.  
"Blair, if you want to be a shaman, I'm not going to stop you."

"It's not supposed to be about wanting, Jim. It's just supposed to be."

"Then let it be." Jim watched Blair smile at him in the dark. Then that luminous curve diminished.

"I think I'm a little crazy now. . .just so you know. But I think you already know."

Jim swallowed a hard lump of reflexive denial. "It happens. We all go a little crazy sometimes."

Blair butted him with a roll of his shoulder and head. "Cut that out. I'm serious." Cut what out, Jim wondered, as Blair went on. "I mean, I can feel it surging up. This great--great thing, this big new thing. And I want to dive down and meet it. But I think if I do, you'll be thinking you have to chase after me, save me, pull me back. And I don't know if you should. I think I could do this and we'd still be, like, tethered. If you'd just let that happen."

Christ, he'd worked out an entire metaphor for this, whatever this was. Jim wasn't entirely sure he knew. "I don't know what I'm supposed to let happen," he said, throat tight. He realized he was scared, on some level.

"Me. Diving into the wreck. Trying to figure all this out."

"Okay. . ."

"I've been putting it off, all these weeks. Well, not really. Healing and thinking. Moving toward it. But I didn't want to commit to this path before we talked."

Jim returned to the fears he'd entertained earlier in the day. Did he want to leave? Go to some ashram or kibbutz or wherever the hell you went when you were seeking yourself? He didn't think he could stand to let Blair go. Knew he would if necessary, though. And that it would hurt like a dozen bullets in his gut.

"You do what you have to do. I'll be here."

Blair whooshed a breath, turned to tuck his head lower, nearly into the pocket under Jim's chin. "We haven't talked about work."

They had, but Jim knew what he meant. He'd told Blair not to worry about money or work or anything else, and with Blair's medicated okay had phoned his place of employment and told them he would not be coming back. It had been no more than a transitional job, at best. When he'd gone to pick up Blair's last paycheck and his belongings, he'd been struck dumb to discover the shabby warren of cubicles in which Blair had been working for the previous two months. It had the same depressive ambiance of the administrative offices at the city jail, an aura of indifference that even the Dilbert calendars and Buffy posters couldn't overcome. He'd been given a large box packed with Blair's things, which were few enough that they rattled around loose in the bottom: a coffee mug Jim recognized from his old office at Rainier, a smooth stone embossed with the word _serenity_ , a book on JavaScript, and a favorite pen.

Jim had sat in the truck afterwards and cried, and put a crack in the windshield with his fist.  
   
"You don't have to work," he said now, a bit roughly to cover for the feeling behind his words.

"I don't get it."

"I have money. It's not an issue."

Blair sounded dubious, wary. "You say that now--"

"Always."

"I know you don't have a lot of respect for slackers."

"I have respect for you," Jim said. "I know you'll do whatever's right for you."

"Jesus, Jim." Blair's head dug in deeper, resting on Jim's shoulder, cached into the underside of his jaw. Jim smelled salt spilling free from the ocean inside him, which he imagined as an ocean of grief and love like his own.

"It's going to be okay," Jim said. It would be different, he thought to himself, but okay.

"You think, huh." Blair breathed, wet and soft against Jim's aching throat.

Jim whispered, "I do."  
 

*****  
 

**Author's Note:**

> Graphic descriptions of past rape and torture.


End file.
